


Mission Report

by smilebackwards



Category: Star Wars - All Media Types, Star Wars Prequel Trilogy
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Communication Failure, Gen, Hurt/Comfort, POV Alternating, POV Outsider, Qui-Gon Jinn Lives
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-02-07
Updated: 2019-02-07
Packaged: 2019-10-23 18:00:43
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,063
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17688203
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/smilebackwards/pseuds/smilebackwards
Summary: Karris IV,Obi-Wan wrote, dating it with the galactic standard.Have proven myself so incapable that Master Qui-Gon is coming to recall me back to the Temple.





	Mission Report

Mace put down the datapad and sighed. The galaxy seemed to become more turbulent each year. Karris IV was just the latest in a lengthy list of diplomatic crises which were only increasing in frequency. 

With four warring nation-states, Karris IV would need a deft hand. Mace would have given it over to Qui-Gon, who’d been responsible for the last peace treaty, but Qui-Gon was on the Outer Rim leading relief efforts after an asteroid storm made planetfall.

 _Kenobi,_ Mace thought immediately, pulling up the list of active Knight assignments. Perfect, he was just due back from Rodia at 1800. It was poor form to hand him a full ration pack and a new assignment practically on the landing pad but Karris IV was delicate and time sensitive, and Kenobi didn’t know the meaning of shirking duty. There was already a report on Rodia filed and waiting in the Council inbox. Mace fully expected it to bear the Kenobi hallmarks of danger, wit, and success. He got up to make a cup of caff before settling back in to read it.

Kenobi, at the tender age of fourteen, had written better mission reports than Qui-Gon had ever been prevailed upon to do. Qui-Gon’s reports had generally been a few lines at most. A few paragraphs perhaps if there’d been some particular flora or fauna he wanted to bring attention to. Any time he’d been begged to expound, he’d looked at the archivists as if they were simple and said, “If someone needs to know more, they can come ask me.” 

Mace had brought a bottle of Ryoo wine and a data recorder to Qui-Gon’s quarters the one time he’d really needed to know the details of how Qui-Gon had negotiated the peace at Kiantu. 

Everyone had given up on him by the time Kenobi became his Padawan. Their first off-planet mission being capped by a well-structured report eight pages long had raised a number of eyebrows and the entire Council had collectively and silently agreed to ignore the fact that it had clearly been written by the apprentice and not the Master as protocol dictated.

Years later, when Kenobi had really caught his stride, his mission reports had read like holonovels. Padawans still checked Mission to Callum X (Jinn-Kenobi 960 ARR) out of the archives as if it were the latest political thriller. Master I’Pari had once laughingly told Mace that she’d caught a junior Padawan reading it under her desk during Galactic Politics, blissfully unaware that they’d be getting to it in the curriculum in two weeks. If the Temple were ever in dire financial straits, they could probably sell the thing to a publisher.

Mace himself had read Mission to Illarya (Jinn-Kenobi 958 ARR) no less than a dozen times, solely for the joy he received reading about Qui-Gon being chased through a jungle by something called a cliamut which was apparently akin to a small, fuzzy rancor. Kenobi was a scrupulous recorder, with an eye for detail and a sharp, dry wit. Although that could cut both ways. Mace had once gone cold reading the words _‘Another day, another dismal failure by yours truly. I’m sure my Master despairs of me ever attaining Knighthood at this rate.’_

It had been a rare slip, both in emotion and perspective, and had led Mace to surmise that Kenobi recorded his own personal journal of events prior to converting it to the mission reports in third person—all proper Master Jinn and Padawan Kenobi—in order to maintain the polite fiction that Qui-Gon himself might be writing them. 

Mace wondered if Qui-Gon ever even read the mission reports. If he’d ever talked to Kenobi about that. 

He certainly didn’t seem inclined to talk to Kenobi now. 

Only a few years past, Mace and Qui-Gon had often traded stories of their Padawans’ achievements and misadventures. Lately, Mace had stopped starting sentences with ‘Did Kenobi tell you’ because the answer was inevitably, invariably ‘No’ and there was something crushing about it. Jinn and Kenobi had been a legendary team for over a decade despite the rocky beginning and end to Kenobi’s apprenticeship.

Mace glanced up at the chrono and closed the report on Rodia for the time being. If he was going to send Kenobi straight back out into deep space, it was only courteous that he do it in person. He detoured to the quartermaster to pick up a standard mission pack and, on a whim, requested a new cloak as well. 

Aside from negotiation and wit, Kenobi was famous for losing cloaks—to the elements, blaster fire, black holes for all Mace knew. He’d heard through the Temple grapevine that the quartermaster had issued an embargo against Kenobi until the next standard year.

Quartermaster Tendo gave him a hairy eyeball, like he knew who the cloak was for, but Mace looked back at him with irreproachable stoicism and being a Council member had its perks. Master Tendo handed over the requested supplies without further question.

Mace arrived at the landing pad just as Kenobi’s shuttle touched down. There was a pneumatic hiss and the ramp lowered slowly, Jedi-issue boots becoming visible, then cream robes, and finally, Kenobi’s blue eyes and copper hair.

He looked tired. Mace felt a flash of regret. 

Kenobi’s eyes widened slightly when he saw Mace waiting for him. He schooled his face quickly into calm serenity and bowed at the waist. “Master Windu.”

“Knight Kenobi,” Mace said. “Congratulations on your success on Rodia.”

“Thank you, Master.” Kenobi tilted his head curiously. “Was there some aspect of it that warranted the Council’s attention?”

Mace shook his head. “I regret to ask you to take a new mission so immediately, but there’s a tense situation on Karris IV that requires your skills.”

“Certainly,” Kenobi said, crisply, and waited alertly for Mace to elaborate.

“Karris IV suffers from several split factions with deep ideological divisions and charged blasters.” Mace hesitated. “The peace thirty years ago was negotiated by your former Master. The mission report is...sparse.” 

“Surely not,” Kenobi said, eyes sparkling with mirth.

Mace felt his own lips curve. “I’d have Qui-Gon go, or at least brief you, but he’s on Utapua and not due back for a week.”

Something shuttered and bleak passed through Kenobi’s eyes at Qui-Gon’s name. Mace wondered again at what had happened between them when Qui-Gon had come out of his coma after Naboo. The Council had given Kenobi a field Knighting when Qui-Gon had been under for three months. No one had said that they didn’t think he’d wake up, but it had been implied, and the Jedi needed every Knight they had. Kenobi’s talents were wasted sitting at his Master’s bedside. 

Kenobi had insisted they hold the ceremony in his Master’s cold, blank room in the Healing Ward rather than the traditional Temple Spire with its sweeping arches and Force-warmed marble. The rasp of Qui-Gon’s breathing had been loud in the quiet as Yoda pronounced Kenobi a Knight of the Order and Mace severed his Padawan braid. Kenobi hadn’t flinched.

Qui-Gon woke up two months later, alone, with Kenobi in the far-flung Larentian system.

“What is _this_?” had been the first words Qui-Gon spoke, hoarse and afraid, Kenobi’s braid clenched in his fist.

It was frustrating as all hells trying to understand now why Qui-Gon and Kenobi barely spoke when all their actions held every evidence of devotion.

Mace handed Kenobi the new mission pack and cloak. Kenobi’s quick grin flashed as he let the fabric run through his fingers. Mace thought his current cloak looked somewhat over-long. An oddity for Kenobi who was always tidy and correct.

“Garen will be pleased to have his spare cloak back,” Kenobi said, then added, sardonic, “Assuming I manage to hold onto this one through an entire mission.”

“May the Force be with you, Knight Kenobi,” Mace offered.

“And you, Master Windu,” Kenobi said, then his boots clattered back up the shuttle ramp and he was gone.

 

*

 

Qui-Gon was pouring himself a cup of tea when the door chime rang.

“Mace, come in,” he said, stepping aside to let his old friend cross the threshold. “Tea?”

“Do you have sugar?” Mace asked suspiciously. “I’m not drinking your unfiltered swamp water without it.”

“I do,” Qui-Gon said, shielding the sudden spike of pain the question brought. All the sweetener in Qui-Gon’s quarters had once belonged to Obi-Wan. There hadn’t been much call for it recently.

“How did the relief efforts on Utapua go?” Mace asked as Qui-Gon poured him a cup.

“As well as could be expected,” Qui-Gon said, shaking his head. “They still have years of rebuilding ahead.” The asteroid storm had decimated the western coast of Utapua. Food and medical supplies were the least the Republic could offer. Qui-Gon fully intended to request an extension to his assignment and an additional frigate of building materials and engineers.

“Speaking of rebuilding, I sent Kenobi to Karris IV,” Mace said. He took a sip of tea. “The treaty you negotiated held for thirty years but the latest tensions have apparently eroded it to a breaking point.”

Qui-Gon felt his heart stutter and skip. Karris IV was a tinderbox and always had been. “Who did you send with him?”

“No one, unfortunately,” Mace grimaced. “We’re stretched too thinly as it is, Qui-Gon. You don’t think he can handle it?”

“Obi-Wan has always been competent,” Qui-Gon said. But he should never have been sent there alone. Qui-Gon wouldn’t have allowed it if he’d been in-Temple. Except it wasn’t his place to allow anything for Obi-Wan anymore. Obi-Wan was a Knight. And Qui-Gon had tried to let go.

Mace gave Qui-Gon his signature stony stare. “I can’t tell if that was a vote of confidence.”

Qui-Gon looked at him in surprise. “Of course it was.”

“Perhaps,” Mace said, carefully, “you might consider being a little more effusive. Kenobi is one of the most promising Knights in the Order. He would be considered a credit to any Master.”

Qui-Gon’s fingers clenched white around his cup. “I am immensely proud of Obi-Wan.” He dropped his voice. “More so than I ever was of Xanatos.”

“Force, Qui-Gon, is _that_ the problem? I don’t think he’d Fall to hear you say it.”

Qui-Gon suddenly wanted Mace out of his quarters. Mace who had been there for Obi-Wan’s Knighting, who had severed his Padawan’s braid and sent him out into the unforgiving galaxy, alone. He reached for Mace’s still half-full cup and said, icily, “Perhaps you might leave decisions about Obi-Wan to me this once.”

Qui-Gon watched the tea swirl down the drain. He could remember, vividly, gasping awake in the Healing Ward, the memory of a red lightsaber through his chest and Obi-Wan’s anguished scream. _Obi-Wan!_ he’d thought, grasping for a training bond that wasn’t there. On the bedside table, there had been a long copper braid and Qui-Gon had reached for it with trembling fingers while the machines around him screeched and healers came running. Obi-Wan was alive, they’d explained to him, thank the Force, but it still felt as if he’d been stolen from Qui-Gon in the night. 

“Qui-Gon...,” Mace said, and Qui-Gon turned back around to face him. He looked surprised.

Anger left Qui-Gon in a rush. His chest ached around his scar. “I’ll see you in Council chambers at seventh chime tomorrow to give my report,” he said, and palmed the door control to send Mace on his way.

Qui-Gon sat heavily on the couch. Perhaps Mace wasn’t wrong in this at least. Qui-Gon had never been open with praise for Obi-Wan the way he had for Xanatos. He’d meant to avoid the sin of pride—in both of them—this time around, but suppressing the words hadn’t suppressed the warm glow in Qui-Gon’s chest every time Obi-Wan mastered a kata or skillfully handled a tricky diplomatic situation. And for Obi-Wan it had gone perhaps too far in the opposite direction, engendering an excess of humility and self-abnegation that Qui-Gon had never intended.

Qui-Gon still remembered the sparring bruises and training saber burns that Obi-Wan had silently nursed without benefit of bacta gel or bandages until his sleeve had ridden up one morning and Qui-Gon had turned his wrist to see a stinging red welt across his forearm.

“I didn’t think it was important,” Obi-Wan had said, looking at him with stricken confusion in his eyes.

What would he suffer silently now that he was a Knight and not a child? Qui-Gon wondered. He swallowed the thickness in his throat and stood to pour himself more tea. 

 

Seventh chime came quickly. 

“Agree with you the Council does,” Master Yoda said when Qui-Gon put forth his request to continue relief efforts on Utapua. “Much suffering there is. Ask the Senate we will for—” 

The holoprojector at Mace’s side gave an urgent beep and at a nod from Master Yoda he let it flicker to life.

“Please forgive me the interruption, Masters,” Obi-Wan said, projected in blue hologram. He gave a correct bow but his words were clipped short. It rang out like a warning klaxon coming from Obi-Wan who rightfully enjoyed a reputation for being preternaturally calm and collected. Qui-Gon could see the Council members shift in concern.

The hologram caught, freezing Obi-Wan in place. He looked troubled and there was a blaster hole through the sleeve of his cloak. Qui-Gon took a deep breath as the feed sputtered back to life.

Obi-Wan half turned and deflected a stray blaster bolt with his lightsaber. “Negotiations have reached a contentious point,” he said, understated. 

Qui-Gon stepped into range of the holo capture. 

Obi-Wan started in surprise. “Master?”

“Obi-Wan. Where should I rendezvous with you for extraction?”

“Extraction?” Obi-Wan asked, his brow furrowed. “I thank you for your consideration, Master, but I don’t need extraction. I fully intend to complete the mission, I simply wanted to provide an update on the current state of affairs and alert the Council that I may be unable to communicate at the preordained times.”

Considering Obi-Wan was holo-calling in the middle of a firefight, Qui-Gon didn’t like to imagine what he would view as untenable conditions for communication. “Obi-Wan—”

Obi-Wan frowned. “Just a moment, please.” He stepped backward and his cloak shifted as if caught by wind. Qui-Gon had the uncomfortable suspicion that he’d stepped off a building. All Jedi were taught to slow a fall with the help of the Force but most tended to keep it to a twenty foot drop or less. Obi-Wan, as a Padawan, had routinely, absently, dropped off gantries and platforms and ledges. He always landed as gently as if it had been a single step but it never failed to put Qui-Gon’s heart in his throat. 

“We will send you support, Knight Kenobi,” Adi Gallia said when Obi-Wan’s image settled.

Mace nodded. “Qui-Gon,” he said, with a glance at Qui-Gon to confirm, “will arrive on Karris IV to meet you soon as possible.”

Obi-Wan looked as though he regretted calling, but he said, “Thank you, Masters. May the Force be with you.”

Mace closed the holoprojector.

“I’ll leave immediately,” Qui-Gon said, striding toward the door.

“Qui-Gon,” Mace called from behind him, but when Qui-Gon turned to look over his shoulder Mace shook his head as if he’d thought twice about what he was going to say. “Be careful.” 

Qui-Gon nodded and quickened his step to the landing pad.

 

For all his haste, there was no avoiding the half a day it would take to reach Karris IV.

The hurry-up-and-wait of hyperspace was excruciating. Meditation proved futile. Behind his closed eyelids Qui-Gon could see the blaster hole in Obi-Wan’s cloak and the way his hair had grown out of his Padawan brush cut, the years stretching a gulf between them.

When Qui-Gon had woken after Naboo, it had been to a different world, with Obi-Wan gone, Anakin apprenticed to Master Plo, and only an endless stretch of healing in front of him. Qui-Gon had done it all, unprotesting. Breathing exercises for his punctured lung. Agonizing stretches for his weakened muscles. A mind healer for the red nightmares that echoed into his waking hours. 

When Obi-Wan finally returned from his mission on Xha’ra, Qui-Gon had thought himself ready. He’d hidden his support cane and served Obi-Wan tea in their old quarters, emptied of Obi-Wan’s things, as if he were a guest. _I’m all right,_ Qui-Gon had tried to say. _You don’t have to carry me for a burden._

What he’d really said, his diplomat tongue gone leaden, had been, “How was your mission?”

He remembered now, with the terrible clarity of hindsight, how Obi-Wan’s smile had faltered and fallen away. _How are_ you _?_ Qui-Gon should have said. _I’ve missed you desperately. I wasn’t ready to let you go._

But Obi-Wan had taken the cue. He’d always been willing to follow Qui-Gon, two steps behind. “It went well. The new Xha’raan queen will be a good leader.”

“I look forward to reading your report,” Qui-Gon had said, although he’d neither read nor written a mission report in years. Obi-Wan had taken up the writing of their field reports at a young age. He’d excelled at it the way he excelled at most things and the archivists had stopped looking at Qui-Gon with tragic eyes. It had been a win to all sides from Qui-Gon’s perspective.

“Are you well, Master?” Obi-Wan had asked, in the doorway, after they’d traded Temple gossip and talked about the weather and anything, anything but what was important. Obi-Wan’s features had been soft with worry and the blue of his eyes had pierced Qui-Gon to the heart. He hadn’t been able to speak.

Obi-Wan had reached out, as if to catch Qui-Gon’s hands, but in the same moment Qui-Gon had been stepping aside and they’d missed each other. Obi-Wan had been sent to Amarth the next morning, then Etikaa and Kashyyyk and Diartmun. Qui-Gon hadn’t seen him since.

Qui-Gon watched the white-green marble of Karris IV appear out the viewport. He didn’t intend to miss Obi-Wan again.

 

*

 

Obi-Wan looked at his brand new cloak and sighed. Two blaster holes near the hem and another in the left sleeve. He’d be able to patch them but the shot to the sleeve had gone through to singe his wrist. Luckily, it was only his non-dominant hand, Obi-Wan thought as he settled himself against a low stone wall. 

There wasn’t much to be done for the moment besides licking his wounds and detailing his failures in longhand. Obi-Wan pulled a pad of flimsi out of his rucksack. His datapad was hopelessly cracked. Master Windu was going to think twice about ever giving him fresh-minted mission supplies again.

 _Karris IV,_ Obi-Wan wrote, dating it with the galactic standard. _Have proven myself so incapable that Master Qui-Gon is coming to recall me back to the Temple._

That it was Qui-Gon coming to his assistance only added to his mortification. Qui-Gon had evinced less than no interest in seeing Obi-Wan again after the end of their partnership. Their one meeting after Qui-Gon had come out of his coma had been stilted in the extreme. Obi-Wan remembered how he’d run from the landing pad after getting back from Xha’ra and arrived outside their old quarters, breathless with the anxious anticipation of seeing his Master awake and not just alive, a quiet husk on a healing bed.

Qui-Gon had acted as if nothing had even happened. 

“How was your mission?” Qui-Gon had asked, blandly, as if their lives had continued on their natural course rather than being harshly bisected by a Sith and a double-bladed lightsaber.

Obi-wan had felt himself rock backwards with shock, but Qui-Gon had taught him how to handle the unexpected turns in diplomatic negotiations. And how to take a blow. 

Obi-Wan had answered on auto-pilot while his mind raced. Was Qui-Gon disappointed at how Obi-Wan had failed to catch up to him during the battle with the Sith, forcing him to fight alone? That Obi-Wan had allowed himself to be Knighted without Qui-Gon’s approval? That he hadn’t been in-Temple to assist during Qui-Gon’s convalescence? That he’d lobbied for Master Plo Koon to take Anakin on as a Padawan?

Perhaps the problem was that there were so many options, so many things that Obi-Wan had done poorly. 

Or perhaps this _was_ the natural course that Qui-Gon had always anticipated. That Obi-Wan would become a Knight and their partnership severed as neatly as his Padawan braid. He’d long feared that he’d become a burden to his Master. Qui-Gon had still been patiently polishing flaws off of Obi-Wan as he turned twenty four, his crechemates years into their Knighthoods.

Obi-Wan sighed and looked up at the pink and orange of the sky as the sun faded. In a few hours, three pale moons and a shock of stars would replace it. Karris IV really was a beautiful planet when you weren’t being shot at.

He levered himself up and made for the spaceport. It wouldn’t do to keep Qui-Gon waiting. Force knew Obi-Wan had given the man enough trouble already.

 

The Jedi shuttle carrying Qui-Gon landed softly, kicking up only a little of the inescapable white sand of Karris IV into the air. Obi-Wan tucked his suddenly trembling hands into the sleeves of his cloak and waited.

The shuttle ramp lowered and Obi-Wan’s former Master strode toward him with long, quick steps, almost running. 

Seeing Qui-Gon again felt like a punch to the chest. He looked as tall and strong as he had when Obi-Wan had first met him, not the pale shadow of himself he’d been in the Healing Ward or the odd in-between when Obi-Wan had first seen him awake. Obi-Wan sucked in a hard breath.

Qui-Gon’s hands came up to cradle the back of Obi-Wan’s skull, thumb brushing over the place a Padawan braid had once been, and he pressed his lips gently to Obi-Wan’s forehead in benediction. Obi-Wan felt something that he’d held rigid inside himself for years slowly buckle and collapse.

“Obi-Wan,” Qui-Gon breathed, “are you all right?”

“Of course, Master,” Obi-Wan said, his voice cracking on the lie. He could handle the stalled negotiations and blaster shots easily, but this, _this_ — 

Qui-Gon took Obi-Wan’s left wrist and turned it to survey the blaster burn. Reaching into his pocket, he pulled out a tube of bacta gel and squeezed a generous amount onto the burn. 

Obi-Wan pulled back his hand. It was too much, this sudden strange return to when Qui-Gon had cared for Obi-Wan’s cuts and scrapes and saber burns. “I’m sorry that the Council asked this of you. Truly, Master, I can manage on my own.”

“I know that you can,” Qui-Gon said, but his eyes were sad. “I should— Obi-Wan, there’s so much I should have done differently for you. You were ready for Knighthood years ago, but I didn’t _want_ to send you off on your own, away from me.”

Obi-Wan’s eyes stung. “I thought you were glad to see the back of me,” he said quietly. “I know you never wanted”— _me_ —“another Padawan. Not after…” _Xanatos._

Qui-Gon’s face went through a series of cascading facial expressions that Obi-Wan struggled to follow. Regret. Chagrin. Grief. They were not the emotions Obi-Wan had always hoped to inspire in his Master. What he wouldn’t have done for Qui-Gon to look at him with affection or joy or pride.

Qui-Gon raised his hand to cup Obi-Wan’s cheek. “I’m sorry for the pain I’ve caused you in my grief and folly. I’ll tell you plainly, now. There is no one in all the worlds I hold more dear than you, Obi-Wan.” 

Obi-Wan leaned forward to press his face to Qui-Gon’s shoulder, letting his tears be absorbed into the fabric of his Master’s cloak as Qui-Gon’s arm came up to circle him.

After a minute Obi-Wan leaned back and cleared his throat. “Do you remember the mission report you wrote the last time you were here, Master?” he asked. “One sentence. It has been of extreme value to me. ‘ _Someone else can have this job next time._ ’”

“Well, I was mostly right.” Qui-Gon’s smile was slow and warm. “It would bring me great pride to watch you conduct the negotiations. Perhaps we might track down the feuding parties together?”

“Yes,” Obi-Wan said, feeling his heart open and unfurl. “Yes, I’d like that.”

  



End file.
